Number of missing people rising in Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad: With an alarming rise in cases of missing people, especially women and children, since 2009, the Andhra Pradesh police have taken several measures to trace them in co-ordination with various agencies and police force from other states.

According to data available with the CID, there was an upward graph in the number of missing persons including women and children during the last four years. A total of 47,936 went missing since 2009. Of them 13,120 were women, 11,104 female children and 5,926 male children.

The state police and department of Women Development and Child Welfare seek the involvement of NGOs, parents, guardians and other agencies in their initiative to address the issue of missing persons, Additional Director General of Police (CID) S V Ramana Murthy, said.

After going through all processes, we try to bring a new hope to parents who are unable to search or trace their loved ones, who either have gone missing or are suspected to having been kidnapped or have run away, he said.

We have taken a number of measures to trace missing persons which yielded good results and police have succeeded in tracing 120 male children so far this year compared to 88 children last year. However, only 47 female missing children were found this year, Ramana Murthy said.

"Solving a missing case is not so easy. After registering a case, the police meets parents, friends, teachers and others to come to an exact conclusion or an opinion on the cause of person going missing. Later, we have to take help of concerned police officials of other states," he said.

Citing an example, Murthy said recently the state police traced a missing girl in Gujarat after 11 years.